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“You can’t tell somebody how to express themselves — you can’t. But I think you can tell people, ‘Hey, the way you’re expressing yourself, that hurts me.’ "

- Paul Beatty, an American writer and 2016 winner of the Man Booker Prize for his novel The Sellout. Beatty is the first writer from the United States to be honored with the prize.

In The Sellout, Beatty chronicles an urban farmer who tries to spearhead a revitalization of slavery and segregation in a fictional Los Angeles neighborhood. The novel was also awarded the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.